2010-05-30
*9142, Month 7, Day 6*; We travel to Terrovere, a small village east of Gnedfort. The locals all get silent when we enter the only inn. We stay a night, keeping our ears open, but we learn nothing new. We tell the locals we are on out way to Malby. We try and scout to make sure we are not followed, and Beeddel hides our trails when we go off the road. We find a place to picket the horse in the rolling grasslands without being seen. We slowly approach Rom’s Mount. During our approach we are all subjected the The Suffering Tread – a manifestation of The Deeping where it seems as if a giant is about to tread on us. Wind sucked out of our lungs, panic in our throats, and a great weight descends. A few of us are unable or unwilling to back down, and though the ground drops in front of us, and vertigo makes us swoon, the 2 caught in the effect muster the will to resist. It leaves us with a sense of vertigo for a moment, and leaves no physical evidence of any kind.
As we approach, cold winds start blowing over us, and we hear the sounds of riots, screaming, horse hooves and the smell of death. Something horrible, in addition to the river flooding and killing thousands, went on here. All of us are on edge, our sanity is beginning to fray, but we manage to circle the mount to be out of sight, and come round to the earth temple. Deciding that the earth temple is the easiest way, we make our way up the rubble pile inside. Our best climbers are assailed by cold blasts, treacherous footing, fetid scents, and sink holes that tried to pull us under. Beedel made his way up to Cairn Top and scouted a bent iron we saw growing from the undergrowth – a family tomb entrance. The rest of the party made it up, with Ace’s escort for us all in case we fell. We bent back the bars enough for the average size characters to squeeze in and began to explore. There were traps enough for the unwary, including a collapsing ceiling, flooded chamber, and 2 armored, skeletal guards. The whole system consisted of a entry, a receiving chamber, columbarium, crypt proper, chapel, supply area, reliquary, and a whole set of flooded chambers over 120 feet deep that we surmised may be drained by some operation in the earth temple. The crypt of family Crithomyssis remained an enigma until we finally discovered the concealed door and lured away the armored skeletons. The stone tablets of genealogy we were seeking were found in the reliquary they guarded. We took our rubbings and got out, though one of them struck at Belim as he crawled out, a deep gash into his leg. Grumwell examined them and declared that he remembered a text he had read in the Oighnan family records in Tadeus – we had the proof we needed.
We endured the trip back down the hill While Beeddel scouted from above – spotting a pair of men making their way to our mounts picket line. He hurried back, suffering the horrific visions, smells and dangerous conditions as best we could. Many times we felt pursued by some unknown force, and could not shake the sightings at the edges of our vision. Beeddel and Ace went ahead and captured the 2 men, who claimed to have long ago sent word to town. We discussed what to do, but before long our decision was made for us by the sound of an angry mob – the locals were not taking kindly to our trek into the dead city. Apparently some hunter from the village saw us go into the ruins and found our picket. We began to saddle up and prepare to move out when that giant’s tread sound came out of nowhere, rushing in and scattering our mounts and us alike. Belim and Beddel managed to avoid its affect, and when the rest of us, including our captives, were pulled into the effect they tried to pull us out as the ground vanished beneath our feet – succeeding only in securing themselves to us to join us as we feel. Feel is perhaps the wrong word, sunk into the earth and through it, without touching anything is what happened. After a great feeling of sickness and nausea we were deposited unceremoniously in some vast cavern, in the dark. A horrendous sense of vertigo could only mean we had been pulled into The Deeping – the dark mother’s veins. Some of us retched, and the 2 hunters began to scream – attracting the attention of whatever may dwell in the caverns. In the dark, we spoke in whispers, contemplating what to do next.